1:30 PM. Appomattox, Virginia. At a simple farmhouse, still open to visitors as it was, Lee and Grant meet. Lee, in his gray dress uniform, his shiny boots, his red silk scarf, and his gold-hilted saber at his belt, arrives first. Grant arrives in his private uniform, completely muddied. And this is the key: the old, aristocratic, 19th-century, agrarian world of the South versus the common man, new, practical, technical, of the North, a precursor to the 20th-century America. The surrender is signed. Victory is total. Grant allows the Southern soldiers to keep their horses and the officers their sabers so as not to humiliate Lee.
